The business environments and marketing landscapes these days change frequently. No organization can increase revenue and profit consistently without reskilling and upskilling the salespeople regularly. Most organizations these days boost the efficiency and performance of salespeople by implementing innovative sales training programs.
According to EconomicsDiscussion.net,
“Sales training is a process of providing the sales force with specific skills for performing their task better and helping them to correct deficiencies in their sales performance.”
Your organization must focus on sales training to accomplish a slew of objectives – increase revenue, effectuate communication, enhance brand image, promote customer loyalty. At the same time, the sales training programs will help your organization to make salespeople more productive by honing their communication and administrative skills.
The new-age learning management systems (LMS systems) make it easier for your organization to implement and customize sales training programs without investing in extra resources. In addition to automating key aspects of sales training, the LMSs help you to deliver updated information and content to the salespeople.
But you must remember that the LMSs differ from each other in many aspects – features, usability, accessibility, security, and technical support. Your organization cannot deliver and administer sales training effectively without choosing the right learning management system (LMS) for sales training. You must focus on some important features to choose the right LMS for sales training for delivering sales training programs.
10 Features You Must Consider to Select to Right LMS for Sales Training
Mobile User Experience
You can make a sales training program successful only by ensuring the right salesperson access the content at her own pace and convenience. Many people these days access websites and consume content using their smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. Hence, you must choose an LMS for sales training that is optimized for mobile devices. The LMS must deliver a superior mobile user experience to make salespeople acquire knowledge while working remotely or working from home.
Learning Models
The LMS systems enable salespeople to understand concepts and topics on their own by accessing a wide range of digital content – ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, videos, and infographics. But some salespeople still prefer instructor-led training to self-paced learning. They want an instructor to describe the concepts and answer their questions. Hence, you cannot reskill and upskill all salespeople only by launching online training programs. You must choose an LMS for sales training that allows each learner to form her custom learning path by bridging the gap between instructor-led and self-paced learning.
Content Authoring Tools
As a software package, content authoring tools will help you to create a variety of eLearning content for the salespeople. The new-age LMSs come with built-in content authoring tools. The software applications help you to create customized multimedia content. While comparing LMS for sales training, you must focus on the built-in content authoring tools. It is always important to choose an LMS that comes with built-in content authoring tools to create courses by integrating text, images, videos, infographics, quizzes, and MCQs.
Off-The-Shelf Content
Most organizations these days lack the skill and resources required to create customized content for various sales training programs. In addition to creating customized content, they look for options to save both time and resources by leveraging off-the-shelf content. The popular LMSs for sales training come with the option to access ready-to-use digital libraries. You can integrate the LMS with a robust digital library to enable salespeople to access a wide range of content over the internet. The off-the-shelf content will make it easier for your organization to improve the salespeople’s ability to communicate, listen, negotiate, and solve problems.
Gamification
According to FinancesOnline.com,
“33% of employees prefer to have game-like effects in their training platforms. Also, 83% of employees who undergo gamified training are more motivated at work.”
You can easily keep the salespeople engaged and motivated by embedding various gamification elements into sales training programs. You can easily gamify the sales training programs when an LMS supports gamification natively. However, you must remember that adult learners, unlike school and college students, love gamification options like getting points/scores, receiving real-time performance feedback, and competing with other learners.
Multi-Tenant Support
Your organization will use the same LMS to provide sales training to the salespeople, dealers, vendors, and channel partners. That is why; it becomes essential to divide the learners into multiple groups or categories according to products, roles, skills, and topics. You must choose an LMS that allows you to create multiple groups or categories and assign relevant courses to every group or category. At the same time, you must look for an option to monitor and track the ongoing sales training activities using a single and unified interface.
Collaborative Learning
The LMS will enable every salesperson to acquire knowledge and hone skills by accessing content at his own pace and convenience. But the salesperson must have the option to ask questions and clear doubts. The new-age LMS systems enable salespeople to interact with instructors and other learners through chats, query corners, and discussion forums. The salespeople can leverage these options to understand various concepts clearly while connecting and interacting with other salespersons.
CRM Integration
The salespeople must access relevant customer information without any hassle or delay to improve customer communication, overcome customer objections, and close sales deals. Your business can enable salespeople to access real-time customer information on demand by integrating the LMS with your existing customer relationship management (CRM) solution. The integration will help you to synchronize the sales training programs with strategic marketing plans. Hence, you must choose an LMS system for sales training that can be integrated seamlessly with your existing CRM solution.
Reporting and Analytics
You cannot boost the efficiency of salespeople without assessing and finetuning the performance of various sales training programs. You can assess the performance of individual sales training programs when the LMS comes with built-in reporting and analytics tools. Also, you can learn what the salespeople are learning and how they are learning based on real-time data. Also, the analytics will help you to finetune the sales training programs by identifying shortcomings and opportunities for improvement.
Custom Branding
The LMS systems for sales training differ from each other in the category of customization. You cannot leverage an LMS fully without customizing it according to your organization’s sales training strategies. It is always important to opt for an LMS that can be customized to reflect your organization’s look and feel. Also, you must look for the option to make the LMS complement your organization’s brand elements by adding themes, logos, colors, and similar branding elements.
You customize the LMS software developed by Mintobook according to your organization’s sales training strategies and needs. You can use this LMS to reskill and upskill the salespeople by implementing both self-learning and instructor-led learning. Also, you can integrate the LMS with a ready-to-use cloud-based digital library with the right content. This will help make the salespeople acquire knowledge by accessing a wide range of digital content – ebooks, journals, PDFs, images, infographics, audio, and video.
